techno-religiosity

religious expressions of transhumanism 

By Carl Teichrib

Transhumanism, the intellectual movement claiming we can direct human evolution through science and technology, has a religious quality to it. Moreover, new religious associations have arisen in response. This article, excerpted from my book, Game of Gods, explores the techno-beliefs that dot the transhuman landscape.

Modern transhumanism has resurrected a marginalized philosophical religion, birthed a “trans-religion,” and energized a subset of the Mormon faith.

For transhumanists in Russia, the ideas of Nikolai Fedorov and Cosmism have been renewed. Fedorov, who died in 1903, was a quiet librarian who advocated a synthesized philosophy constructed from Russian Orthodoxy and technical progress. Looking upon the resurrection of Jesus Christ as an example to follow, Fedorov held that God intended humanity to engage in self-resurrection.

In other words, if Jesus could rise from the dead, then Mankind must find a technical way to likewise achieve this eminent goal. Given enough time, everyone from the past, present and future would be raised to immortality through the spiritual application of technology.

David F. Noble merges his commentary with Fedorov’s thoughts,

“Federov combined the ideals of Russian Orthodoxy, the Russian aristocracy, and the Russian peasant commune into a doctrine of what he called ‘the Common Task,’ the unification of all humanity and the ‘removal of all the obstacles that prevented the evolution of man’s humanity toward its last stage, the stage of self-creation, immortality, and God-likeness’… This transformation, which entailed the reconstitution of the bodies of past humans, demanded mankind’s complete mastery and control over the universe, including space.”[1]

Early Russian Cosmists also incorporated Theosophical and occult ideas, Perennial philosophy and Gnostic approaches, self-organizing complexity and chaos theory, Russian cultural sentiments, and mystical science – “higher magic partnered to higher mathematics.”[2]

While Fedorov discouraged some of the esoteric teachings of his contemporary futurists, the Cosmist worldview opened wide the doors of philosophical imagination. Cosmism also fit within the Russian tendency for totalitarian solutions. In his book, The Russian Cosmists, George M. Young explained that it placed the “good of the whole community above the freedom of the individual to go his or her own independent way.”[3]

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky – a friend and protégé of Fedorov – believed all matter consists of life, which flows from lower states to ever-higher orders of being. His thought was that as we climb the ladder of material existence, expanding into the universe and reaching the pinnacle of material development, we will finally break free of our physical bodies and move into an era of Gnostic-like spiritual perfection.[4]

Laboring in his homemade laboratory, Tsiolkovsky put his Cosmist and scientific concepts to paper. His ideas were groundbreaking; astronautic theory, multi-stage rockets and spaceflight, artificial gravity and space-based solar energy.[5] He also designed space colonies that could sustain up to 100 people, containers wherein the social elite would move upward while laborers worked for the collective good.[6] His technical papers formed an intellectual path that eventually culminated in the launching of Sputnik 1. Today you can see a prominent statue of Tsiolkovsky, the world’s father of modern rocketry and a Soviet hero, sitting under the 107-meter tall Monument to the Conquerors of Space in Moscow. Cosmism then and today looks to space for salvation.

A Cosmist contemporary of Tsiolkovsky worth noting is Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky. Certainly not a household name in the West, his thoughts have nevertheless soaked into our spiritual milieu and the transhuman project.

Vernadsky’s importance lies in his theory of the Earth evolving an intelligent biosphere. Others before him had similar ideas and Chardin’s belief in the Noosphere, a consciously awakening planet, may have been formulated after attending a lecture by Vernadsky. The Russian, however, was able to press this hypothesis into a synergistic philosophy: matter has life.

George M. Young writes, “He was one of the first scientists to emphasize that the exchange of matter leads to a basic unity of the planet, its human inhabitants, and the cosmos.”[7] 

All things, according to this creed, share a unity of life. In expounding on Vernadsky’s theory, Young contextualized it in a remarkably familiar way,

“We are, in a very deep sense, related to all on our planet – to animals, vegetables, and minerals, as well as to other human beings, and as the rational component of the biosphere, we have a responsibility, literally, to all.”[8]

In light of this we are all considered Global Citizens, and our allegiance must be to the Earth – and not just as an inanimate object, but personified as thinking matter. We could call this the image of Gaia, the living planet or Mother Earth. Young writes: “As inhabitants first and foremost of the cosmos and the planet, human beings owe allegiance to the biosphere more than to any other nation, ethnic entity, economic class, or system.”[9]

Cosmism today is fashionable.

In my 2013 interview with Dmitry Itskov, the founder and host of the Global Future 2045 International Congress, he explained that Tsiolkovsky was “definitely the person who inspired me.” Specifically, it was Tsiolkovsky’s vision of “radiant mankind and this transformation from this material body to the energetic form of a human body, it is spiritual transformation.”[10]

Dmitry, whose evolutionary mission began with an experience of spiritual transformation, invoked Tsiolkovsky’s name and dream during his opening speech at the GF2045. It was not the first or only time I would hear Tsiolkovsky mentioned.

The Cosmist goal of unlimited transhuman freedom – escaping the bonds of Earth – was also visible in the GF2045 introductory video: The planet is on the brink of global collapse and we must either choose a new dark age or a new paradigm in human evolution; a complete technological and social revolution is therefore required if Man is to survive; BCI, artificial intelligence, and simulated worlds will point the way forward; and with this revolution will come a new ideology, ethics, psychology and culture, and even a new metaphysics. By creating manageable matter, we will move our consciousness into an artificial carrier and upload our personalities into a series of nearly immortal avatars. Then we can reach for the universe and ascend to the stars. The new gnostic man, unencumbered by Earth and limiting matter, will then be devoted to “spiritual self-improvement.”[11]

GF2045 is certainly not the only example of Cosmism within the transhumanist movement. Much of the community has, in broad or specific ways, adopted some elements of the Russian philosophy. Giulio Prisco, a former analyst with the European Union Space Agency and past director of the World Transhumanist Association,[12] is a modern day apostle. I have personally spent time with Prisco while attending a conference of the Mormon Transhumanist Association, and our avatars have crossed paths in Second Life. Prisco is devoted to the post-human cause and advocates a new Cosmism: “Science and religion, spirituality and technology, engineering and science fiction, mind and matter. Hacking religion, awakening technology.”[13]

Ben Goertzel is another modern Cosmist, noting that science requires faith as we look beyond the data points to seek a holistic future. Recognized for his brilliance in artificial intelligence, cognitive robotics and perceptual psychology, Goertzel holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics and is the author of A Cosmist Manifesto.[14] His volume bridges science and psychedelics, technology and philosophy, Carl Jung’s Collective Unconsciousness and mathematics.

In his discussion of the “global brain,” a subject he specializes in, Goertzel offers two possibilities. First, the merging of individuals within the collective intelligence, “sacrificing much of the individuality we currently associate with being human, but gaining a feeling of oneness with a greater mind.” Or a system that retains a certain level of individuality without complete immersion, “connecting to the global brain could be more like using the Internet today – but an order of magnitude more pervasive.”[15]

“Assuming a free society, interacting with the global brain would be optional,” he wrote, “but nearly everyone would take the option, just as so many other highly convenient, inexpensive technologies have been adopted by nearly all people given the chance.”[16]

He is correct. Humanity will opt in.

Trans-humanism has also birthed a trans-faith. In 2002, Martine Rothblatt officially launched the Terasem Movement, a self-described trans-religion. Terasem – meaning “earthseed” – incorporates teachings on technical immortality and mind uploading, prayers, rituals, and Kundalini yoga. It is a fusion of spirituality, visionary creativity, and a secular faith in technology.

But what does it mean to be a trans-religion?

Gabriel Rothblatt, Martine’s son and a Terasem pastor, gave an explanation during the 2013 Mormon Transhumanist Association’s annual conference: “Trans-religion means transcending religion. It means encompassing all religions. Essentially, secularism.” Core traits of the techno-faith, Gabriel explained, are joyful immortality, unity, and diversity – “the self-fulfilling prophecy of creation.”[17] Terasem’s central beliefs: life is purposeful, death is optional, God is technological, and love is essential.

Martine Rothblatt argues that classical religions will eventually conform to the technological extension of humanity. Of special interest to the Terasem founder is the religious acceptance of mindcloning. By uploading massive amounts of personal information – creating what they call mindfiles – it is hoped that when some future technology comes online, these databases can be reconfigured into the “conscious prostheses of ourselves.”[18] Rothblatt expects that this digital personality will then desire spirituality, and trusts that traditional religions will recognize the copied soul of the virtual human double as valid. Equating the soul to consciousness and then extrapolating the mindclone to the function of an organ, Martine writes,

“No classical view of religion believes you transplant a soul when you transplant a heart. Nor can you kill a soul by killing the body. Hence, the mindclone continues to radiate the soul of its person whatever may have occurred to the associated body. Beautifully, this is consistent across atheism and theism…

…Mindcloning will be viewed as a medical technology, analogous to organ transplants, a life-extending technology embraced by even the most classically minded adherents to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.”[19]

Important to this story is Rothblatt’s personal life. 

Having been born as Martin in 1954, the global communication and satellite expert announced being trans-gendered at the age of forty. The following year, 1995, Rothblatt’s revolutionary volume, The Apartheid of Sex, argued for gender fluidity and trans-genderism as a social norm.[20] The Apartheid of Sex played a major role in promoting the concept of gender as a social construct; labels of male and female are acts of injustice, as sex is a complex continuum; and creative expression is negated when we constrain sex and gender to binary roles. Gender, like humanity itself, would be trans in the spin-cycle of social transition.

In the 2011 edition of The Apartheid of Sex, re-titled From Transgender to Transhuman, Rothblatt recounts the non-binary position, adding the following in the Preface,

“In a similar fashion I now see that it is also too constraining for there to be but two legal forms, human and non-human. There can be limitless variations of forms from fully fleshed to purely software, with bodies and minds being made up of all degrees of electronic circuitry between. To be transhuman one has to be willing to accept that they have a unique personal identity, beyond flesh or software, and that this unique personal identity cannot be happily expressed as either human or not. It requires a unique, transhuman expression.”[21]

Terasem is obscure outside of the transhumanist community. However, to post-human thinkers and techno-utopians, this new secular religion is a beacon of enlightened progressivism.

Transhumanism has also energized the creation of a Mormon-based organization, the Mormon Transhumanist Association (MTA). Unlike Terasem, the MTA is not a religion in itself but a network to advocate transhuman goals with an unapologetic Mormon stance: “Mormonism mandates transhumanism.”[22] In other words, rapidly advancing technologies point to a fulfillment of the Mormon teaching that man is to strive for exaltation, to become as God. Although the majority of its membership is Mormon, mainly affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it is not exclusive to Mormons. Atheists, agnostics, and progressive Christians are part of its demographics. Gabriel Rothblatt has been a member of the MTA. Cosmist Giulio Prisco, an atheist transhumanist who adopted a religious position due to his MTA involvement, is a member.

Responses to the 2014 MTA Members Survey offer some extra details as to the composition of its body. In terms of Cultural Politics and Economic Politics, 53% and 31.8% see themselves as Progressives; 75% are married and have never been divorced; 85.7% are male; and 42.2% have earned a post-graduate degree.[23] Interestingly, as transhumanist organizations go, the MTA has experienced relative longevity. Other groups have started and then fragmented or faded away.[24]

Formed in 2006 with 14 people, the MTA had close to 600 members ten years later. But numbers are always less important than narrative and reach, and in both it has demonstrated success: first in moving the conversation past secularist boundaries, and then in projecting the post-human theme beyond its membership. Indeed, much of the recent transhuman shift from secular approaches to religious contexts have come through MTA input. And in terms of reach, the association’s voice has touched a broader audience. In 2015 the journal Theology and Science published an essay on Mormonism and transhumanism, and articles broaching the two showed up in HuffPost UK, Mail Online, The Daily Dot, and iDigital Times. The New Yorker published a piece the following year, and the popular online tech-site, New Atlas, ran a story in early 2017. From 2010 onward the Mormon group has been mentioned in various works exploring transhumanism,[25] and the MTA itself collaborated on a book, Parallels and Convergences: Mormon Thought and Engineering Vision.[26]

However, the MTA’s annual conference has raised its reputation as a platform to explore techno-ethics and to bolster post-human speculations. Transhumanists and futurists like Natasha Vita-More, James Hughes, Giulio Prisco, Aubrey de Grey, Eric Steinhart, and Robin Hanson have shared the podium. Likewise Mormon historians and authors, and MTA members – many with professional backgrounds – have presented papers and theories. And sometimes critics have been invited to speak.

I traveled to Salt Lake City in 2010 to attend the MTA conference, Transhumanism and Spirituality. Held on October 1st at the University of Utah, this event explored religious and technological boundaries. The MTA president outlined his New God Argument and Terryl Givens connected mythology and the human-divine struggle in his presentation, Fear and Trembling at the Tower of Babel. Others talked of humans and spiritual entities locked in a struggle for scarce resources; that all life is interconnected in the quest for spiritual perfection; and that transhumanism should be a next-gen religion intent on unifying humanity. One speaker suggested it was time for faith communities to evolve perceptions of God and spirituality, shifting theology to embrace paradox and replace dogmas with questions: “Part of evolving spirituality is paying attention to how we image God.”[27] Giving a keynote, Max More contrasted atheist transhumanism against the “petulant child… cosmic sadist” of the Old Testament.

“I should tend to want to discourage talking of gods in transhumanism,” More said. “I think we can probably do better than that…”[28]

Evangelical Christianity was not given high marks.

I penned an article about the meeting and published it in my magazine, Forcing Change. Later this was circulated within the Mormon transhumanist community and elsewhere. Many months afterwards Lincoln Cannon, a co-founder of the MTA, contacted me.

Would I be willing to attend the 2013 conference to give a Christian critique of religious transhumanism?

I was surprised by the request but thankful for the opportunity, and appreciative that the organization would consider bringing a critic to the table. This was an open door and I agreed to participate.

When I arrived at the venue in Salt Lake City, Cannon – a perceptive and eloquent spokesperson for Mormonism and transhumanism – immediately shook my hand and said, “You’re brave to be here.” I understood the sentiment, for my evangelical beliefs and worldviews stood in contrast to those around me. But Cannon was taking a risk too. By inviting an outside critic he was courting a level of uncertainty, and with it, the potential for pushback from his own community. It was a gutsy move on his part and by the MTA board, who treated me with courtesy and respect.

Having only fifteen minutes to make a case, the standard time given to most of the presenters, my talk had to be concise yet meaningful. This was far from easy. For days I had struggled over my task and sleep had been elusive. My desire was to communicate in a way that was heartfelt and loving, honest and truthful. The potential for misrepresentation and miscommunication was ever on my mind, and I wrestled with this responsibility up to the moments before my name was called.

What did I say? 

The speech is publically available,[29] but the basics are thus: An acknowledgment that Christianity is not opposed to human betterment through technology, however it is the issue of salvation that is at the core of its tension with transhumanism. After giving a brief survey of the Biblical perspective of God’s relational design in Genesis 1, that all things were created by Christ Jesus as the Author of Life (John 1:3), that humanity broke fellowship with God and therefore chose the path of death, and that Jesus Christ entered the world of men – experiencing death but defeating this enemy in a finalizing act – I closed by focusing on Christ’s crucifixion, specifically the one thief hanging by His side.

Allow me to expand on this.

In preparing for my talk, I was struck by what took place at the cross. Jesus, hanging naked and scourged and beaten, was being publicly executed between two thieves. Consider the narrative from the Gospel of Luke,  

   “Then one of the criminals who were hanged blasphemed Him, saying, ‘If You are the Christ, save Yourself and us.’

   But the other, answering, rebuked him, saying, ‘Do you not even fear God, seeing you are under the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this Man has done nothing wrong.’ Then he said to Jesus, ‘Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.’

   And Jesus said to him, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise’.”[30] 

Specifically, it was what was missing that caught my attention. 

Notice that Jesus did not tell the man he would be saved by doing good works – in fact, the thief was dying because of his crimes. Good works were out of the question. Nor did He say to the thief, “Find a technical or scientific solution to your problem of death.” Neither did He say to join the priesthood, or follow temple obligations, or start a charity, or go to church, or even be baptized. There was no eight-point path to enlightenment, no constructing “Heaven on Earth,” no postures for liberation, no chants or spells or rituals. The thief was being executed now and could do nothing practical.

And this returns us to our present state-of-affairs. Like the thief, there is nothing technical to be done on our part. For us, the problem is positional. Just as one man’s act of disobedience to God, Adam in the Garden, became representative of the human race, condemning us to death without our say in the matter, so our salvation could only come through one Man being obedient, without guilt, having the ability to overcome death – without our say in the matter.

This would require none other than the Author of Life to directly intervene. It would have to be His perfecting act given as a gift. The Apostle Paul put it this way: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” The implication is clear: plusses are not going to work. It cannot be Jesus Christ plus technology plus politics plus religious rites and obligations, plus, plus, plus. The plusses are never ending and never good enough.

In John 14:6 we read the words of Jesus: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” There may be some temporary good in the plusses, but they are incapable of saving. The real question is this: Will we trust in Jesus Christ for our salvation? 

Belief and trust in Jesus Christ was all the robber had left, and that the thief recognized his own sin demonstrates a contrite heart.[31] Belief opens the door to relationship, repentance to forgiveness, trust to expectant hope. Jesus Christ said to him, “Today you will be with Me in Paradise.” For it would be Christ, by the power in Himself, in God the Father and the Holy Spirit – the Deity-in-trinity[32] – through which death would be conquered three-days later. As the Apostle Paul said in his letter to the early Christians, Jesus Christ is the “firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.”[33]

The thief’s soul was safe in the perfect position of the Redeemer.

For those who, like the thief, admit our inability to save ourselves – who believe and repent, entering into a relationship of trust with the Author of Life – a New Man is born.

This is not the New Man of Marx or Lenin. This is not the Supreme Being of Comte or the Übermensch of Nietzsche or the Master Race of Nazi Germany. Neither is this the Perfected Man of Theosophy or the “Good Man Made Better” of Freemasonry or Chardin’s UltraMan. It is not Exaltation through the rituals and obligations of Mormonism. Nor is it the neo-human dream of eugenicists or the post-human vision of transhumanists.

No, the New Man in Christ – the person whose salvation is placed in the already resurrected Messiah – is new in a different way. Redeemed in the position of Christ, the person is now spiritually aware and awake. The ancient letter to the church in Ephesus illustrates what this looks like: to no longer walk in the futility of a darkened understanding, a person alienated from God, living a life of self-gratification and greed. Instead, walking in the truth of Jesus Christ, to discard our former conduct, “the old man which grows corrupt” and to renew the spirit of our mind, “that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.”[34]

The character of the New Man is to be established on the image of God, graced with tender mercies, kindness and humility, expressing power with reservation and gentleness – the meaning of meekness – to be longsuffering, “bearing with one another, and forgiving one another.” The New Man is to put on love, “which is the bond of perfection” and to “let the peace of God rule in your hearts.” We are to be thankful to God, acknowledging Jesus Christ in our words and actions.[35]

We are saved through faith, but after salvation the New Man is to exemplify this in what we say and do. The new life is active, not passive. Faith without works is a dead religion.[36]

I will be honest. While my salvation is in the finished work of the Messiah, the Old Man in me battles with the New Man I am supposed to be. A day is coming however, when those in Christ will be raised by Him in spirit and body: Resurrection to life.[37]

 ————

Endnotes: 

[1] Noble, The Religion of Technology, p.121.

[2] George M. Young, The Russian Cosmists: The Esoteric Futurism of Nikolai Fedorov and his Followers (Oxford University Press, 2012), p.3.

[3] Ibid., p.25.

[4] Ibid., pp.145-154.

[5] Marina Benjamin, Rocket Dreams: How the Space Age Shaped our Vision of a World Beyond (Free Press, 2003), p.122. See also Young, The Russian Cosmists, p. 148-149 and Noble, The Religion of Technology, p.120-121.

[6] Ibid., p.123. Tsiolkovsky also believed in self-perfection by weeding the human population of defective individuals. See Young, The Russian Cosmists, pp.151-152.

[7] Young, The Russian Cosmists, p.156.

[8] Ibid., p.157.

[9] Ibid., p.158.

[10] Dmitry Itskov, interviewed by Carl Teichrib for Magnum Veritas Productions, LLC., June 16, 2013, GF2045. Interview location: Empire Hotel, New York City.

[11] 2045: A New Era for Humanity (2045 Initiative, released in 2012 as a lead-up to GF2045). This video is available online.

[12] The World Transhumanist Association later morphed into Humanity+, an influential transhuman think tank.

[13] The quote comes from a sidebar paragraph in Giulio Prisco’s Turing Church blog [http://turingchurch.com], accessed June 2, 2017.

[14] As taken from his online CV [http://goertzel.org/Goertzel_resume.pdf].

[15] Ben Goertzel, A Cosmist Manifesto: Practical Philosophy for the Posthuman Age (Humanity+ Press, 2010), pp.235-236.

[16] Ibid., p.236.

[17] Gabriel Rothblatt, speech titled Terasem Movement Transreligion, given during the Mormon Transhumanist Association annual conference, April 5, 2013. A video copy of his presentation is posted on the MTA YouTube channel [https://youtu.be/BcQqFYXeFDo].

[18] Martine Rothblatt, Virtually Human: The Promise – and the Peril – of Digital Immortality (St. Martin’s Press/Picador, 2014), p.270.

[19] Ibid., pp.268-269.

[20] Martine Rothblatt, The Apartheid of Sex: A Manifesto on the Freedom of Gender (Crown, 1995).

[21] Martine Rothblatt, From Transgender to Transhuman: A Manifesto On the Freedom Of Form (Martine Rothblatt, edited by Nickolas Mayer, 2011), p.xiv, italics in original.

[22] Lincoln Cannon, then president of the MTA, made the statement during the 2013 MTA conference (April 5). For more on the connection between Mormonism and transhumanism, see Allsop et al, “Complementary Aspects of Mormonism and Transhumanism,” Parallels and Convergences: Mormon Thought and Engineering Visions (Greg Kofford Books, 2012, edited by A. Scott Howe and Richard L. Bushman), pp.67-92.

[23] Mormon Transhumanist Member Survey 2014 Summary; on file.

[24] From what I have gathered, most have failed due to internal tensions and clashes.

[25] The MTA is mentioned in the following works: Robert M. Geraci, Apocalyptic AI: Visions of Heaven in Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and Virtual Reality (Oxford University Press, 2010); Gregory R. Hansell and William Grassie (editors), H+/-: Transhumanism and Its Critics (Metanexus Institute, 2011); Catherine Wessinger (editor), The Oxford Handbook of Millennialism (Oxford University Press, 2011); Maxwell J. Mehlman, Transhumanist Dreams and Dystopian Nightmares: The Promise and Peril of Genetic Engineering (John Hopkins University Press, 2012); Morgan Luck (editor), Philosophical Explorations of New and Alternative Religious Movements (Routledge, 2012); Calvin Mercer and Derek F. Maher (editors), Transhumanism and the Body: The World Religions Speak (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); William Sims Bainbridge, Dynamic Secularization: Information Technology and the Tension Between Religion and Science (Springer International Publishing, 2017).

[26] A. Scott Howe and Richard L. Bushman (editors), Parallels and Convergences: Mormon Thought and Engineering Vision (Greg Kofford Books, 2012).

[27] Quoted by Carl Teichrib, “The Rise of Techno-Gods: The Merging of Transhumanism and Spirituality,” Forcing Change, Volume 4, Issue 10, October 2010, p.10-11, as drawn from audio recordings and research notes from the conference.

[28] Ibid., p.11.

[29] Carl Teichrib, A Conservative Christian Critique of Religious Transhumanism, speech given to the Mormon Transhumanist Association, April 5, 2013. Posted on the MTA YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/VFxDVZjyjeE. You can also read a copy of the speech in Forcing Change, Volume 7, Issue 4, April 2013, pp.14-18.

[30] Luke 23:39-43.

[31] A great example from the Old Testament is King David in Psalm 51. “For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart – these, O God, You will not despise” (Psalm 51:16-17).

[32] Consider who raised Jesus from the dead: Jesus Himself – “No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This command I have received from My Father” (John 10:18); God the Father – “whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it” (Acts 2:24); And the Spirit – “But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you” (Romans 8:11)

[33] Colossians 1:18.

[34] See Ephesians 4:17-23.

[35] See Colossians 3.

[36] See James 2:14-26.

[37] See Romans 6:9.